MySpace as an Organizing/Awareness Tool?

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MySpace logoBecause this came up in our last Digital Media call and Nettrice's last Digest article, I thought it might be interesting to folks that Tech Soup has a new article "How to Use MySpace to Raise Awareness" (by Eileen Cruz Coleman) about using MySpace as a low-cost p.r. tool.  It has a few general ideas about starting a social network online that I'm going to reference in my work in the next couple months, especially around the idea of active seeding and connecting other forms of communication.


Comment from gariet cowin on December 7, 2006 - 2:16pm

Thanks for blogging about myspace!

Some of the folks here at PCM have been bugging me to set up a myspace page for the OLLIE program (which I did, sort of), but I don't think that they quite understand what myspace is. They've just heard that it is something that young people use, and has something to do with social networking.

Their idea, I think, was to befriend Portland youth, who would then get interested in participating in the OLLIE program. Unfortunately, befriending youth via myspace is not easily done, as there are restrictions put in place to stop adults from adding under-aged kids to their friends list.

Befriending other organizations makes more sense to me. Although I'm still not totally clear on what the overall purpose is. People here at PCM seem very interested in "brand awareness", and "getting the OLLIE name out there", or whatever. But nobody has told me why that is important. So I guess that's my real question:

If we are already working with more schools than we can handle, and we are sufficiently funded, why do we care if Joe Citizen has heard of the OLLIE program or not?